Penny Arcade

Though I am grieved to admit it, today’s strip may mark a fumbling foray into perverse continuity.  Brace yourselves.

The very mention of credit has always filled mind with the image of a wildly gesticulating robot.  I avoid credit instinctively, like I would one of those steel traps you see in cartoons.  Even if there’s a steak on there or something, I’m like, “No.”  I’m one-hundred percent okay with Gabe getting a credit card though, that’s his problem.  It is a pleasure to see a man physically hunched with debt, as though at some point all that delayed responsibility acquired genuine weight.  Also, I get to set up all the cool-ass wireless shit he bought, the setting up being vastly superior to the buying, certainly and (at least for me) even the using.       

Like any person of demonstrable virtue, I wait with my colleague Safety von Monkey for the release of Masters of Orion 3.  Sense and decorum would dictate that I be reserved in my praise of a game in advance of playing it, but neither of those is ever in supply around here, so let’s just say THEY WIN whatever it is they are up for and call it good.  It was to be released on the twenty-sixth of this month I believe, then the twenty-eighth, then December the sixth, and now when I look at the E to the B I’m pulling the seventeenth?  I don’t care when it comes out, I mean, it already won my imaginary award. 

It’s perfectly fine for them to delay actually, and continue doing so, until I’ve completed Hegemonia.  In fact, I’ve been sort of worried that Hegemonia would come and go and no-one would really notice it, particularly in the face of 2002 Imaginary Award Winner, Masters of Orion 3.  It might be hard to tell, and I don’t really know how Hegemonia has been presented to the gaming public, but it is essentially a combination of a galactic empire sim and an RTS.  Genre hybrids in and of themselves are no reason to sit up in your seat and take notice, but this game has something special about it that I could expound on for a good deal longer that you would care to read.  For one thing, and let’s get this out of the way, it has full co-op in the main campaign - for which it scores in excess of one jillion points.  It is also one of the most beautiful games ever produced on the PC, which one might expect from an RTS but never from a galactic sim.  The ship designs are attractive, but they’re also functional in this odd way that is difficult to characterize - aesthetics are there, but they look like they actually serve their stated purpose.  I just appreciate that.  As for the game itself, you colonize planets in multiple galaxies and then bend their every waking moment to producing your terrible machines of war.  This is all underpinned by a space opera storyline that moves through multiple episodes and missions - thankfully, as in Homeworld, you maintain units and technology as the game progresses.  The interface is a little esoteric in spots, and the voice acting and dialogue are sort of strange from time to time - but neither of those are dealbreakers.  Final score?  Lettuce.

This happens all the time.  When I hear about a big patch coming out for a game, I don’t know if I’m alone in this, but I usually stop playing it altogether.  There have been other examples, but let’s go with the most recent:  Battlefield 1942.  I am, was, whichever, completely nuts about this game.  I’ve said on multiple occasions that I believe it the successor to Tribes, etcetera, and so on, tally pip God save the Queen.  There’s just some outstanding issues with it that always bugged me and slowly eroded my support, so when a patch was announced that would improve framerate and clear up the very spotty hit detection in some cases I saw no reason to play it anymore in its current state.  Well, apparently the long-announced patch is forthcoming, and now that it is, there’s other games to play or I’ve simply moved on.  This is the other thing that happens all the time. 

I’m going to Goddamn, Filthy Spokane from now until Sunday, it shouldn’t really change the schedule here but Friday’s post might be a bit light on account of the many, many games of Mexican Train Dominoes one is expected to play in family situations.  I don’t know why that game is so fun, you’re basically just putting one number by the other. 

(CW)TB out.

i’m searching the city for sci-fi wasabi

It’s got nothing to do with Gabe, either - he got it to me yesterday well in advance of midnight.  I was just watching that fabulous Buffy, then I finished Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones, then I went out to get something to eat, then I leapt over a river of molten rock…

I forgot to upload it.

(CW)TB

Yes it’s true I decided to get a credit card last week. Not just any credit card mind you. No, I have a lot of the same reservations about credit that Tycho does. So I got myself a comp USA card. I figured, how much trouble can I get myself into at one Goddamned store. The answer is quite a bit.

The truth is I got the card for one very specific reason. I decided that I needed to get a Tablet PC and really try and make some art with it. After meeting with a reader from MS who gave me a tour of the Acer model I decided that was the product for me. Comp USA extended me a reasonable amount of imaginary money and I in turn purchased a very real Acer C102T Tablet PC via their website.

It arrived yesterday and I immediately realized my mistake. It seems I had purchased the one Tablet PC that does not come with a built a built in wireless connection. So Tycho came over and we made a trip to Comp. We initially assumed that purchasing products of the same brand would insure an easy and swift install. However it was not until we returned the Linksys router and notebook adaptor that we had originally purchased and picked up a Belkin access point, Microsoft notebook adaptor and Netgear switch that I was actually able to enjoy the thrills of wireless internet. I find it mildly amusing that in the end it was three different products from three different companies that actually ended up working.  With data flowing freely through my apartment it was time to get down to business and see if I really could draw a comic strip on this thing.

It turns out I can. Today’s comic strip was done from start to finish on the Tablet PC. I started out by sketching the characters in Alias Sketchbook. It blows me away that a piece of software this good is free. One of the big problems with the Tablet PC is that there just isn’t much space there to work with. Most art programs would take up the majority of your screen with tools and windows. However Sketchbook was designed for the tablet PC and so roughly 90 percent of the screen is pure white digital paper. The tools and options have been placed in an almost Sims like radial menu that sits unobtrusively in the corner. I picked a 2B pencil and started sketching. After a bit of screwing with the pressure sensitivity settings I was in heaven. I was able to sketch just as I would on paper and with the same results. In no time I had all the sketches I would need for today’s comic. I think that for artists, the Alias Sketchbook software is the killer app that the Tablet PC needed.

Normally this is where I would scan my pencil sketches and import them into Photoshop to ink and color them. However my sketches were already saved out as Jpegs on the desktop of my Tablet PC so I just opened Adobe and got down to work. This is where I noticed the first real problems with the way I work and the Tablet PC. When making the comic I like to work at an insane size and resolution. Just one of the characters you see in a given strip starts out as an image approximately three thousand pixels wide. Working large and then shrinking is a trick most digital artist’s use. On my nineteen inch Monitor this is no problem. However on the 10 inch Acer I found myself clicking and scrolling around the image constantly. Never able to see more than a few inches at a time I had to constantly switch to the hand tool and drag the image around. That’s the other thing, I had no keyboard shortcuts. Anyone who uses Photoshop for a living has no doubt mastered a series of keyboard commands that speed up their work. For me my hand naturally rests on the space bar so that I can press it down and move around the image at will. I didn’t realize how much I rely on Ctrl-Z and Ctrl-Alt-Z. Having to go up to the menu and click undo or step back was pretty tedious. The other thing I noticed around this time is that this little fucker gets hot. I don’t just mean like the bottom kinda gets warm I mean you could cook pancakes on the backside of this thing. Discomfort aside I was technically able to accomplish the inking and coloring even if it did take longer.

What all this tells me is that when we travel this little puppy is going with us. I used to have to bring a Laptop and scanner and my Wacom tablet whenever we went someplace in order to draw the comic strips. The Tablet PC takes the place of all those tools and even makes a pencil and paper unnecessary. As for using it at home that’s a different story. I will certainly use it as a digital sketchbook. I can draw right into it now and bypass the scanner completely. As for the finish work like inking and coloring I will probably still do that on my home machine. The Tablet PC is a sketchbook. You would not do a finished painting in a sketchbook. You rough out your ideas in it. Work out the composition and lighting, but at some point you need to move to a canvas. The tablet PC takes the place of the sketchbook, not the canvas. Is it an expensive sketchbook? Yeah. But it’s the only sketchbook I’ve seen that lets me check my mail and surf the web.

-Gabe out

Unless we hit our heads or something and completely lose it, this strip should represent the final chapter in our two-chapter, chapter thing.           

When I saw HomeLan‘s interview with John Tynes from Flying Lab Software, I remembered that I met those guys like three months ago and said I would write something about their stuff.  It was a fairly profound experience, so I don’t know why I never dealt with it here, but I feel bad about it and I’m going to fix that shit right now. 

I think about games essentially all day.  I rationalize this massive time investment by saying that I have a “fascination with logical systems,” which I believe sounds very fancy, and I try to wear a stern look when considering them so as to give the impression of great exertion.  I know that it is regular human beings that create these things, I know it as a fact, but when you go somewhere they actually make games and it looks like some kind of Goddamn dentist’s office it throws you off.  But there it was, true enough - there’s a Safeway right across the street, there’s a place Brenna and I like to eat like three blocks away, and it’s right in the middle of stuff.  I found this exciting - they’re making something in there I think is going to be extraordinary, and it’s so ordinary outside that it almost hurts.  It begs the question:  are marvelous things are happening, everywhere, all the time, in places that look (to the casual observer) like Goddamn dentist’s offices?  I paused outside to wonder. 

Delta Green is a collaboration between a Seattle developer called Flying Lab Software and the authors of a supplement called Delta Green for the Call of Cthulhu pen-and-paper game.  When I went for my visit, I wondered exactly to what extent these two groups were “collaborating” - i.e., were they just licensing the property, how often were they in contact, that kind of thing.  As near as I can tell, and I was only there for one day so maybe I have this all wrong, but I get the impression that the Delta Green guys are completely integrated into the company and are essentially full developers.  I wish I’d had the presence of mind to ask John Tynes what he thought about designing for sit-around-the-table-and-roll-dice games as compared to videogames, but I always feel like a jackass when I meet new people so I think the question may have caught in my throat. 

In terms of motif, if you are not already familiar with the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft - frankly, I’m disgusted with you.  I’m exaggerating, of course - I don’t actually blame someone for not having the stamina to read the things he writes.  It’s an acquired taste, like Monkey Head, and some people will never have the urge to wade in adjectives.  Obviously, it gets me all the way off.  The fundamentals of his horror sub-genre are easy to grasp, however:  terrible, long-forgotten gods, the twisted creatures in their thrall, and their mortal supplicants are constantly trying to eradicate reality, though the destruction of every living being would also be fine.  Delta Green posits the existence of a governmental agency which keeps these forces in check, and in the videogame you recruit brave souls of varying law-enforcement disciplines to root out dark cults and their otherworldly patrons.  You might be wondering what such a thing might look like.   

It’s a strategic combat game!  From just above the action, your officers clear doors, throw grenades, and utilize special-forces techniques to defeat monsters.  Your pool of agents is drawn from different backgrounds - SWAT, FBI, SEALs, and so on - that make them better at clearing doors, searching rooms, or shooting things with a lot of eyes.  They said that they looked to sports games for a way to control an entire group with a unified purpose, and it was easy to see what they meant in action - like you might call plays in an NFL game, you can set behaviors and maneuvers in real time and it makes perfect sense.

The interview made it sound like they might switch to another project, and then come back to Delta Green if they can’t scare up a publisher.  E3 isn’t long out, and even the strength of the year-old demo I saw was pretty convincing, so I hope things go well for them.  It’s a promising, original project that deserves a corporate sugar daddy.   

Flying Lab also put out a game called Rails Across America a ways back, which I can’t recommend enough.  It’s a real-time strategy game of rail dominance that has esoteric board game depth with a lightning pace.  God, that game is great.

Writing this newspost got me out of virtually every holiday chore, for which I have every one of you to thank.  Who knows if you’ll even get to Penny Arcade this weekend, but I wanted to make sure you had something here, whenever you got to it.  We’ll see you Monday. 

(CW)TB out.

you’ve got nothing but sticks the rest of the year

I think Alias Sketchbook is absolutely incredible.  Feel free to take a look at the sketch below and decide for yourself.

Believe it or not that was drawn on my tablet PC using Alias Sketchbook. It looks just like a Goddamned Pencil drawing if you ask me. Sketching into it feels so natural that occasionally I forget that I’m using a stylus instead of a pencil and that my lines are being rendered by an 800 MHz Pentium 3.

The Holiday has sort of fucked up my Over Easy schedule. Well actually that’s not true. I fucked up my Over Easy schedule by being a procrastinating bastard who didn’t start on it until the month was nearly half over. I told myself I’d spend some time yesterday working on OE but the call of the bird was too much for me. It was Kara’s first time cooking a turkey and I’ll be damned if it didn’t turn out absolutely amazing. As I stuffed my face with juicy bird, mashed potatoes and stuffing I knew that my plan of working on OE was a joke. I spent the rest of the day drunk on turkey, watching Star Wars and playing Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance. The long and short of it is page three of OE may not hit your mail box until Tuesday or Wednesday of next week. That’s really not so terrible when you consider the fact that Tycho has been working on a Penny Arcade card game for like a year and a half. There, now I don’t look so bad do I? So what do you have to say for yourself Tycho? Lazy fuck.

-Gabe out

I come back to see if I’ve spelled things correctly, and he’s found some way to turn a mea culpa regarding his own sloth into a personal insult against me.  Yes, that’s very convincing!

The card game is going to be pretty cool, though.  It’s changed a bit from my initial concept, but I think it has settled into its current form very nicely.   

The central theme is this:  As the game begins, each player has just started their own webcomic, and craves readership.  Forming strips and coalitions, doing battle on message boards and chatrooms, and utilizing irresistable pop-culture references they will strive to be the least irrelevant of their peers.         

(CW)TB

Well the Penny Arcade Internet Notification Tool or P.A.I.N.T is done. It’s been tested and it appears to work great. For those of you who don’t know about P.A.I.N.T, it is just a program that notifies you whenever PA gets updated. However due to it’s size, 1.3 megs we aren’t going to be able to host it on the PA server right away. The guys at Homelan anticipate a pretty big demand for the tool and I think they are probably right. Anyway, if you have the space and the bandwidth to host a file like this please contact Neil and let him know.

On another note, VGD is having a huge Thanksgiving Day sale. Pretty much everything they have is marked down. It’s a good opportunity to pick up some cool import shit on the cheap.

Also don’t forget about the Penny Arcade GBA skins. They are the perfect gift for the pale, game playing, socially inept recluse on your list. 

-Gabe out